Entertainment

Can Wisdom of The Crowds Predict the Weather?

Cumul.us is a weather prediction site that considers the wisdom of the crowds along with professional meteorological reports. Pulling from weather.com, Google and Geonames, Cumul.us combines this data with user-submitted predictions on the weather. The idea is to get a more accurate weather report than what you'll find anywhere else. But I wouldn't trust wisdom of the crowds to land an airplane. Should it be used for predicting the weather?

Here's the thing: I'm a fairly average person, and I don't happen to have a thermostat sitting on my back porch. If I do submit my weather prediction, I'm going to type in exactly what my iGoogle weather widget tells me the weather is for today. And that happens to be coming from the same weather source that Cumul.us uses for its data. So can the site really be all that helpful?

I'll tell you one thing that is somewhat helpful on Cumul.us—the clothing suggestions. I think this is where the wisdom of the crowds really comes in handy for a site like this. I can indicate what I'll be wearing today, and that will give other users a lot more information than just the predicted temperature. Now that's practical information that I can use.

Clothing item suggestions can be submitted by selecting from pre-determined options for tops, bottoms and accessories. Images are pulled from Sugar's ShopStyle so you can get your weather prediction and clothing suggestions quickly at a glance.

There are a few tweaks that can be made for Cumul.us, however. I indicated that I'd be wearing a sweater today, but the image that showed up was in fact a pair of boots with an upper knit trim. And one thing that Cumul.us doesn't have that I find particularly useful are the expected highs and lows, for not just today, but for the rest of the week. In other weather news, Google Earth Layers added a weather layer today, which also comes from weather.com.

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